Students and staff of Acsenda School of Management recently participated in a major cleanup drive of the Vancouver shoreline.
The cleanup initiative was part of Acsenda’s contribution to the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup organised by Ocean Wise and WWF-Canada. The program encourages people to remove shoreline litter to help create healthy waters for everyone, including the wildlife and communities that depend on them.
The Acsenda campus community welcomed the opportunity to do its share in the conservation efforts. In the week leading to the activity, they gathered their gloves, garbage bags and picking tools. A huge number signed up, volunteered their time and effort and donned their Acsenda T-shirt uniforms on the day. Before they break up into groups to start the trash collection, EduCo’s VP for Canada Operations Scott Robertson who helped in the cleanup effort, advised the group about safe practices in collecting rubbish.
“Everyone who volunteered for the activity was pumped to do their bit for the environment,” Scott says. “But we had to take precautionary measures to ensure our students’ safety particularly in the collection of sharps.”
This year alone, Ocean Wise and WWF-Canada estimate that volunteers have already collected 132,869 kilograms of litter covering 4,803 kilometres of Canadian shoreline from a total of 2,691 cleanup efforts. The top 12 most commonly found litter are cigarette butts, foam, food wrappers, bottle caps, paper materials, plastic bags, beverage cans, plastic bottles, straws, other packaging, foam and coffee cups. The Shoreline Cleanup is now recognised as one of the largest direct action conservation programs in Canada.
The success of the Shoreline Cleanup drive was a proud moment for the Acsenda community and very much in keeping with their “global thinking, individual focus” philosophy. The participants all agreed that it felt good to be able to take care of the environment and express interest in attending more of the same activities. Their Facebook shoutout sums it up: “The Shoreline Cleanup was a success! It feels good when we take care of our environment! Let’s continue this great work!”
